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New Orleans, Noah Richler: An old city blossoms, as fecund as the spring

Wrought iron balconies wreathed in bougainvillea, overshadow the Vieux Carré, as it welcomes the newly wed

Away from the excesses of Bourbon Street, the French Quarter demands meandering walks and promises discoveries. (dreamstime)

By Noah RichlerSpecial to the Star

Wed., March 18, 2015

An American flag extends from the elegant facade of Soniat House, baskets of ferns and flowers hanging from its first floor balconies, the wrought iron as delicate as lace. The shutters and high doors of the pair of typical Creole townhouses adjoined by a plantation owner in 1833 are painted green. An attendant in a white jacket opens a smaller door in the larger one and lets you into the passage couvert, a plastered internal archway, and to the office, where the gentleman at an antique desk receives you as if you’ve been visiting for years.

It’s an exquisitely romantic place, with its small, quiet courtyard, redolent with jasmine and magnolia, in which the only sound is of a trickling fountain and lofty palms and bamboo creaking under their own swaying weight.

Tranquility may be found in any of its splendid rooms. Each one is impeccably furnished and has distinct graces: a four-poster bed; a balcony and a view of Chartres Street, a suite in the loft where the living room flanked by grand curtains feels like a stage, the better to make exits and entrances. And, in the reception room, unattended, is a fully stocked bar and a bottle of champagne on ice, guests signing a chit and imbibing there, in the courtyard or in their rooms, as they wish.

The atmosphere is so extraordinarily peaceful that just these first few steps feel like a journey into another time. The best hotels are oases and Soniat House is one of these.

Why would one ever leave, except that New Orleans, city of desire, beckons?

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Away from the excesses of Bourbon Street, the French Quarter promises meandering walks and endless discoveries. There are the famed New Orleans stops, to be sure: morning coffee and beignets, dusted with icing sugar, on the airy terrace of the Café du Monde; the (actually very convenient) streetcar named “Desire;” the clubs of Frenchmen Street; a po’ boy at Verti Marte store or a muffaletta at the Central Grocery Store, with its fabulous collection of foodstuffs and tinned goods, brunch at Brennan’s and perhaps the Creole Bread Pudding Soufflé at Commander’s Palace.

But this is a city in surprising, heady transformation. New Orleans, founded three centuries ago at the bend in the Mississippi where the river drains into the wetlands of the Gulf of Louisiana, is a city that, true to the ecosystem of which it is a part, is constantly finding astonishing new life in a climate that is effortlessly fecund. Oysters and seafood, reliable aphrodisiacs for the newlywed, are fished from the bountiful waters all around supplying the city’s innumerable restaurants and crawfish boils. Vines hang from enormous trees and their full, leafy canopies.

Even the art is lush, as if drawn from the fantastical flora and fauna of the Bayou: pass the art studios of the Gallery District and you will gaze at canvases of wonderful, imaginative excesses – prints at the George Schmidt Gallery of boudoir life of the 19th century (the ‘Dance of the Oyster’, anyone?) or, at the Martine Chaisson Gallery (and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art), the animal paintings, reminiscent of Rousseau and the burlesque, of the Canadian born-painter Jack Niven, a longtime resident.

New Orleans has rebounded altogether remarkably since August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 per cent of the city and washed out most of the Lower Ninth Ward. Whole districts were levelled. Nearly a thousand people died. The city’s population of roughly 486,000 was reduced by more than a half, as residents fled.

But, from decay, springs new life, as ever.

Today, there are 70 per cent more restaurants in New Orleans today than there were before Katrina hit. The population is back up to 350,000 and a significant portion of this growth consists of young people.

To walk the length of Magazine Street is to pass a multitude of inviting new bars and restaurants, and a tour through the Garden District is no longer a few hours of furtive peeking into the estates of aristocratic families on the wane, but a path through a city of excitement and hope. At Coquette, a corner bistro in the Garden District, brunch is a treat and the hamburger so exceptional that even a proud Canadian griller (such as I am) has to concede it’s an American meal.

At the Pêche Seafood Grill, in the Gallery District, one of several restaurants owned by chef Don Link, a relative newcomer to the city’s busy gastro scene, the food is superb and the atmosphere heady. And, at Bacchanal, in the Bywater district previously the wrong side of the tracks, you can walk through a vintner’s shop to a garden with a kitchen and 20-somethings playing the Dixieland that was once the preserve of processions in Treme and an ageing Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

You’ll want to be young, and newly married, in today’s New Orleans, with an appetite to savour all the pleasures that the new city and the old one have to offer.

At Li’l Dizzy’s, near the overpass that divides the French Quarter and Treme districts, white security guards sit down with African-Americans in their Sunday best to the most delicious Louisiana soul food in the city.

In the French Quarter, at William Faulkner House, a gem of a bookstore, shelves of unapologetically literary books are stacked high to the ceiling, to which a wooden fan is affixed. At Commander’s Palace, there are two enormous floors and a top-notch patio, and the service is brilliant theatre. (There is even a table in of the kitchen, should you wish to witness the massive cast performing). And, crowning lazy mornings, the freshly baked “biscuit” that arrives each morning at Soniat House comes with coffee of the local kind, cut with chicory as it has been since the penury of the Civil War.

There are new places, plenty of them, but old New Orleans, gloriously, persists.

Noah Richler feels as at home away as he feels away at home. Read more by him at noahrichler.com and on twitter at @knowwhereyouare

Just the Facts

STAYING: Soniat House (1133 Chartres Street, (504) 522-0570) on a quiet street in the heart of the French Quarter. Melrose Mansion (937 Esplanade, (504) 945-1794), at the edge of it, has a small swimming pool and a modern boutique hotel style.

EATING: Commander’s Palace (1403 Washington Avenue, (504) 899-8221) and Brennan’s (brennansneworleans.com, 417 Royal Street, (504) 525-9711) are the best of the traditional New Orleans families’ restaurants. Chef Don Link’s Pêche Seafood Grill (pecherestaurant.com, 800 Magazine Street, (504) 522-1744) is the liveliest of a new wave of more youth-oriented ones. Coquette (coquettenola.com, 2800 Magazine Street, (504) 265-0421) is an excellent bistro and great place to stop on a walk through the Garden District, and Li’L Dizzy’s Café (1500 Esplande, (504) 569-8997) is the best place in the state for gumbo and soul food.

DRINKING: Bacchanal Wine is at 600 Poland Ave, (504) 948-9111. The Maple Leaf Bar (8316 Oak Street, (504) 866-9359) has music every night. In the same Uptown district is the Carrolton Station (8140 Willow St, (504) 865-9190). At the corner of the Hilton in the Business District, Luke (lukeneworleans.com, 333 Charles Street, (504) 378-2840) is a swell place for oysters and drinks.

SIGHTS: There are numerous boutiques and galleries in the French Quarter, in Bywater and the Warehouse and Arts Districts. Wander the length of Magazine Street. Must-sees include: The New Orleans Museum of Art (www.noma.org , 1 Collins Diboll Circle) and its magnificent, playful sculpture garden, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (www.ogdenmuseum.org , 925 Camp Street), with its superb collection of contemporary art and folk art, a lot of the this made by enslaved or imprisoned African-Americans. Nearby is The National WWII Museum (www.nationalww2museum.org , 945 Magazine Street). Faulkner House Books is at 624 Pirate’s Alley, (504)524-2490.

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